By Lord Steve Bassan, chair of the BITC Place Taskforce.
Last year, Business in the Community (BITC), the UK’s largest responsible business network, launched a call for evidence into the role of business in place-based regeneration and levelling up. Overseen by a high powered taskforce, the ‘Business of Levelling Up: Partnerships in Place’ makes a compelling case for UK-based companies to use their weight to make levelling up a truly core public concern.
Building on BITC’s 40 years of experience in the field of working with executive-level advocates and CSR professionals, the report makes a strong argument for greater use of business leadership and expertise to stimulate change through their involvement in local, cross-sector placed partnerships that are facilitated by an independent connector.
In its Levelling Up White Paper, the Government said it envisaged a major role for the private sector and businesses in making levelling up a reality. The BITC report makes it clear that without a plan to actively engage businesses they will fall short in their ambition.
Why should any of this matter to voluntary sector leaders?
Arguably, it is precisely because of the charity sector that Government has begun to recognise the regional disparities holding back the UK and returned to looking for policy solutions. Our sector has stimulated civic engagement and interest in systemic solutions that look at the root causes of disadvantage and inequality.
The placed-based approach, rooted in the insight and lived experience of many from our towns, tells us what we need to know about how to tackle poverty. The Taskforce looked at what social interventions work and found plenty of encouragement in communities often written off in the past and where managed decline had become the norm. Blackpool and Grimsby as examples may have lost their original USPs, but with civic commitment and business drive and insight, they are places beginning to change.
The Town Deal programme – modest on one level and conceived as a reward for the so-called ‘red wall’ – is the right approach to developing partnerships between charities, local government, business and educational institutions. There are lessons to be learnt from some of the positive experiences of the programme, but for it to work long-term and lead to transformative change, increased revenue funding is needed to enable them to operate as effective place-based partnerships.
Levelling up needs to spread the nation’s wealth and provide solutions that form part of a shared common purpose, healing social division and unlocking the talent of individuals and communities. With the challenges in the UK’s left behind places only being exacerbated by the cost of living crisis, levelling up is more important than ever, and all sectors need to stand ready to help.